The Body
by OhGreat
Summary: Stevie's lost in an empty cycle of one-night-stands. Alex isn't. Dark Stevie/Alex. Mature themes. You know you want it.


**IMPORTANT: **This contains **mature** themes. Also, there are parts that are written in stream of consciousness, meaning that they are **not** bound by grammatical limitations but are instead supposed to be read like poetry. Enjoy!

"The Body"

* * *

Stevie stared down at the body lying next to hers, watching it breathe with a softness. It was naked and raw, and somewhere across its arms were red, ugly scratch marks. The body was a girl, and she had a name, but Stevie never got what it was.

She looked at her own naked body, clothed by the bed's sheets, an ocean of black around her waist and legs. Her hands found her face, and she covered it with them, cowering. She saw the girl, and the girl saw her, and somehow they made it home only to tear off their shirts and jeans, now piled on the floor.

Whose house was this, Stevie started to wonder, and where am I, and was it worth it? She stared at the girl's back, her blonde hair in tangles across her tan shoulders. Stevie felt the urge to reach out and yank it, but her arms wouldn't move the way she wanted them to. She tried to stand up.

A hand shot out, and the body said, "You're leaving?"

Stevie answered, "You want me to stay?"

And the body said, "You make me feel good," and Stevie pulled her arm back like she'd been stung.

"It doesn't matter. Do you even know my name?"

The body, which now looked like a girl as she sat up, the sheets falling from her chest and into her lap, replied, "No. But I like the way your hands crawl down my body—Stay with me—"

Stevie wasn't listening anymore. She grabbed her shirt and tried to cover herself, but the girl tugged on her shoulders and pulled her back down onto the bed, their raw, cold bodies meeting again as hips straddled hips, mouths meeting in a quick fury of loveless, angry kissing.

Stevie stayed for the rest of the night, but she promised herself she'd get the girl's name. She never did.

When Stevie left the next morning, her body hurt and she wasn't feeling good; she felt dizzy and lonely, and maybe a little left out of the group she didn't really have a place in. She was somehow still the wanderer she had been all her life. She was a stranger.

There wasn't anything Stevie looked forward to but seeing a schoolmate, and even that was less a joy and more an unquenchable thirst. Their first meeting was two months ago, and they talked, and they messed around, and sometimes their shoulders brushed together, which only made her throat the desert it was now.

Home was nothing but shadows and an empty fridge, and Stevie would take her heavy shoulders and fall into bed with nothing but unwanted memories of the nameless girls she slept with, who never really wanted to know her name either. They were the same kind of people, lonely and crooked, and they found each other in corners covered in shadows from their downcast faces.

What was she even doing there in a city she didn't know?

School was long hallways and groups of confused people wandering aimlessly through them, a bunch of identity crises waiting to happen. Stevie liked to count them, dissect them, wondering what set her apart from their bodies, what made her different. She'd smirk and talk them down, pull the pranks she and her favorite girl liked to play, but at the end of the day, she was just another walking pile of limbs.

Sitting in the back of the class, she slumped her chin into a propped up hand and watched the front of the room lethargically. And then she watched a person out of the corner of her eye. Alex sat next to her, ignoring everything.

Stevie watched her with something that was a lot like love, knowing there were very real limitations that stopped her from brushing that loose strand of hair behind Alex's ear. It made her feel empty.

School came and went, and so did Alex, and Stevie saw her leave again in the same way she did everyday, and Stevie left also, in her own way.

And the cycle happened again, _one lonely person seeks another lonely person, _and Stevie wasn't surprised that the body she met this time skipped the formalities faster than usual. She had black hair, and Stevie didn't bother to find her name, because the black-haired girl never asked for hers.

They ended up at the girl's apartment, and Stevie woke up three hours later, like it was a routine.

"I want you to stay," the girl said, reaching out to cup Stevie's face.

"Why? So we can sleep together again?"

The girl's body told Stevie she was twenty years old, but it told her no name. The girl shrugged. "That's what we both want, right?"

Stevie disagreed with her. She turned around and left, vowing to change her ways and at least get the first name of the next person. It didn't happen.

She thought of Alex. She thought of her smile. None of those other girls were like her, a set of lonely dolls groping for the first sign of life they could find. Alex wasn't empty.

When Stevie reached the front door of her apartment complex, she saw Alex sitting on the steps, almost like her thoughts had summoned her there. She looked sharp and beautiful, her mouth shaped in an endless mix of a frown and a smirk, her hair melting into her eyes.

Stevie said nothing, just unlocked the complex door and let her inside, leading her up a swirl of stairs, ignoring the shadows of bodies as they passed by.

"No one's home," Stevie said to the house full of memories, shutting the door behind her. They sat down on the couch. They watched the wall. They waited.

It was a heavy wait. It was suffocating.

_Class sucked today._

_Yeah, wanna skip tomorrow?_

_Let's do it. Grab lunch early or something. Where is everyone?_

_Gone._

_Your apartment seems bigger when no one's here._

_Less bodies, more space. Sometimes there's an echo._

_I like it._

_I knew you would. There. Hear it?_

_Yeah. Were your floors always wooden?_

_I think so. They're cold and hard. _

_You sleep on them?_

_Only when I miss the mattress._

_You mean when you bring girls home._

_You know what I mean. _

_No. But you can show me._

Alex's last comment caught Stevie off guard enough that she didn't answer back, and the silence that had overtaken their time together earlier drifted back in. Stevie sunk into the couch a little bit more, and then pushed away and stood up, walking toward the wall on the other side of the room. She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. She turned around.

And then Stevie said, "Why're you here?"

And Alex said, "You don't want me here?"

And Stevie said, "I always want you here."

And Alex said, "Then I'm here because I want to be with you." And she stood up and left the lonely couch, filling the gap of distance between them as she kissed Stevie's lips. It was light.

And that was it.

Stevie stared at her with wide eyes, feeling like her chest had been ignited, losing her breath.

"Kiss me back," Alex murmured, but she said it in a way that was almost like a suggestion, less like a demand.

Alex's words weren't needed. Stevie's mind went blank in exchange for a racing, fired heartbeat, and she grabbed Alex by the shoulders and kissed her.

It had to go down that Alex would pull back, which she did, but Stevie didn't wait to find out if Alex was hesitating. Her heart exploded and she felt her body numb into an unbridled urge that had always been about Alex, and for once she hoped to something like God that Alex wouldn't leave her alone.

When they kissed again, Stevie was the first to open her mouth and kiss her back as hard as she could, and she didn't mean to but she knew she sliced Alex's lower lip with her teeth, and suddenly things started to run together, the background draining into the ground like soaked paint. Stevie kissed her again, and she felt an unexplainable, desperate, raw cry from the back of her own throat. It sounded far away, like it wasn't her own voice but another body's, weak and shaking.

She almost couldn't breathe but she didn't care. In lust or love or loneliness, Stevie crushed their bodies against the nearby wall, holding onto Alex's face and running her hands behind her neck, trying to kiss her longer, deeper, tasting the tip of her tongue and wanting more of it. There was teeth and there was copper and there was newborn desire raging from one breath to the other, locking in a wild mess of should we or shouldn't we.

Stevie's hands trailed from Alex's neck to Alex's everywhere—from her shoulders to her chest to her stomach—until she reached the hem of her shirt, and without hesitation pulled it up and over and onto the ground, hands racing back to the body again, owning, taking. Fingers unbuttoned the shirt Stevie wore on her back, and she shoved it off without really thinking, and her own fingers fluttered to the zipper of Alex's jeans. She undid them, stripping them from Alex's body, yanking them off her hips and away from her thighs and down to her calves—away, away until there was only skin.

"Wait." Alex's own voice sounded just as separate, just as far away as Stevie's did, unrecognizable, full of echoes. "I don't know what to do." And there it was, the voice, her voice, dangerously honest and unforgiving but never vulnerable.

Stevie kissed her neck, didn't mean to bite down but did anyway, sucking gently, fingers at the hem of her underwear. She breathed into her hair, tried to forget her overwhelming sadness, and murmured, "…Let me show you how it's done."

And then what was contour became a messed up sketch of blurred lines and undefined emotions and then there was Stevie leading Alex's right leg up and around her hip, holding her steady yet feeling a whirl a rush an overdose of sensation diving through her brain. There were roaming hands that seemed to limp down her body lower and lower a desperation lining Alex's cries and muffling her fast breaths, the shouldn'ts and uncertainties dissolving into low moans and sobs and an unrelenting sadness that never seemed to go away. Alex gripped at Stevie's shoulders, clawed Stevie's neck, tried to stifle her words into her hair as she seemed to drown in her longing.

Stevie's mouth captured Alex's as her hands ran over her chest, conquering her bare body as they sewed themselves together, a furious storm of legs and arms and lips. Her sorrow seemed to grow with every kiss, every cry, and Stevie tried to forget it as she pulled them both to the wooden floor, consuming Alex, kissing her mouth to stifle the gasps, tracing her tongue over her teeth.

The want of her body pulsed in every direction, swarming her senses in a way that said she wasn't sure where she was going or what she wanted to do, kissing down her body, drawing her lips and tongue across her collar bone and over her breasts and down her stomach, tracing a trail of unrelenting desire that only seemed to emphasize just how alone she really was. _Stay with me, _Stevie said somewhere, lost in time, lost in the girl before her, unrested and tensed and desolate, gripping at her body, holding her close, finding her hip bone with her mouth and drawing her tongue over it, scraping her teeth against it going lower and lower and hearing Alex gasp.

Caught between pushing Stevie away and pulling her closer, Alex wound her fingers tightly through Stevie's hair, gripping the floor with her free hand, arching her back like a bridge just about to break. But the loneliness the sorrow the sadness the regret of it all, of her life, of her body, seemed to overtake her senses, and Stevie felt more alone than ever, knowing this meant nothing, knowing in a few minutes, a few hours, she'd be alone again, watching a reflection that stared back at her with sunken, swollen eyes.

She kissed Alex's neck, running her hands up and down the body, feelings arms and legs, trying to find the person she loved but only finding pieces.

The wild night that was not wild but full of grief was only put to sleep when Stevie seemed to stop, kissing Alex one more time, kissing her jaw. She shivered and moved away. She felt like she couldn't breathe, couldn't really think, and suddenly the horror of her emptiness became bold and heavy, and Stevie realized she was still all by herself.

She groped for her things, looked around for her clothes, and then she couldn't seem to contain her sadness anymore. She choked out a sob, dropped her face into her hands. The tears felt acidic and unwanted, like the darkest betrayal of her body. Her teeth ground against each other as her lips peeled back, her shoulders convulsing, but her breakdown was a silent one. She brought her knees to her chest.

And then a hand reached out, and it seemed to touch Stevie's shoulder with a lightness, a loving she had never felt before, and when she looked up, she was surprised to see it was Alex. She had forgotten she was there.

Alex said nothing, bringing her hand to the back of Stevie's neck, rubbing softly as if to say, _I'm right here, Stevie_._ I know you._

Her body felt warm next to Stevie's cold form, and Stevie muttered, "Can you stay?"

And Alex said, "I can stay."

* * *

**A/N: **So, this is what goes down when you write Stevie/Alex as much as I do: you start to wonder, and then you start to experiment, and then _this_ happens, and you're left with a story that is different from the rest, and you wonder just what people are going to think.

This was supposed to be written poetically, thus the stream of consciousness and lack of grammar in some parts. It's just a style of writing. This story was also a metaphor for "feeling dead", thus the constant use of the word "body" and "bodies", a way people can objectify dead things.

I wanted a stark, raw, emotional piece for Stevie. This was my attempt to flesh out Stevie's character yet again, and, yes, I know straight-as-a-fencepost Alex would probably never sleep with Stevie, but let's just pretend she's down with it for the sake of this one shot.


End file.
